


Call A King

by KatLeePT



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 21:11:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6210265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatLeePT/pseuds/KatLeePT
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years have gone by before Sarah finally speaks Jareth's name again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call A King

She watched as the owl flew away, then turned and headed for home, feeling quite alone. She had cared for the wounded bird for months before dispatching him today. He had needed her, and she had been there for him. She had cared for him, dressing his wound twice a day every day, feeding him even when she'd been disgusted by what she had to do for him to get proper nutrition.

But now, like so many others before him for whom she'd cared, he was gone. Sarah fought tears throughout her entire drive home, but it wasn't until she shut herself away from the world in her bedroom that she finally admitted to herself why she was hurting so much. It wasn't simply the owl or, at least, it wasn't just that owl.

She walked to her bookcase, trailed her fingers over a statue of a Dwarf, and fondly picked up a plush. She stroked the fake fur, remembering another time, another place, and a beast who had been quite real. He and the others had come to visit her many times after she'd returned to her rightful world, but they had eventually stopped coming. Even after their visits had stopped, she would see occasionally spot a Goblin or a Fiery scurrying just out of the corner of her dark eyes, but it had been far too many years since she'd even seen that much of her friends.

She walked to her dresser, picked up a tube of makeup whose lipstick had long ago dried up, laid it down, and opened a drawer. Her fingers paused, for just a moment, on her mother's brush before moving to the object she truly sought. She lifted the book and traced its cover or, more aptly, the man on its cover.

His picture was incredibly sensual, but the man himself had been far more beautiful. No artist could ever do justice to the Goblin King. No paint could truly capture his colorful beauty nor pencil perfectly sculpt his swagger. Not for the first time, Sarah wished with all her heart that she could have accepted his offer, but she couldn't have done it. Her hands had been tied, her fate not her own even though he'd claimed to offer it to her.

She could never have let Toby become a Goblin. She could never have let her father and stepmother lose their child. Most especially, she could not have allowed her father, who had grieved for her mother a very long time, though not long enough, lose his son. After losing her mother, it might well have finished killing the man he'd once been and put him fully under her stepmother's control. She would not lose her father, and she would not lose her brother. And so, she had done what she had to do.

Sarah fought tears as she stood before her mirror, not the only image reflected therein. She looked up sharply when she heard a whisper of high-pitched giggles, but they stopped the moment her chin lifted. She dried her eyes, placed the book back in its hiding area, and closed the drawer of her secret treasures. Then, still with her head held high in the image of the strong and beautiful woman she always persisted in presenting to the outside world, Sarah walked to her window and opened it.

She paused, but not without a startled gasp. The white owl turned on the tree limb just outside her window and looked down its beak at her. His eyes were as wide as her mouth, and for just a moment, Sarah wondered. Could it be? No, it couldn't. It had been a snowy white owl whom she had rescued, and it was probably that same owl returned. From this distance in the setting sun, she couldn't see him well enough to search for any particular markings.

Still, she whispered on the forlorn breath of a broken heart his name, "Jareth." Oh, how she wished it could be him! But it wasn't. It wasn't . . . It couldn't be . . . But yet, the owl was flying toward her just as he had once done. She backed up, her heart beating as frantically as his wings, and in a spray of splendid glitter, the man who had haunted every dream she'd ever had since she'd left him, the man who had never once left her heart or thoughts, the only man with whom she'd ever wanted to be appeared before her.

He was every bit as handsome, majestic, and powerful as he stood before her now as she remembered him being when she'd been younger, and immediately, her tears started. "Jareth!"

He smiled. Her heart fluttered again, and she finally understood why people spoke of dying from squeeing over cuteness and why heroines in old, romance books would feel faint in the presence of their heroes. She suddenly wished for something to grasp, something firm to which to hold to keep from falling herself. "You called for me."

She nodded breathlessly, her mind and heart whirling. She had called for him every night in her dreams, but this was the first time she'd spoken his name aloud. She could say that she hadn't called him. She could say she'd only spoken his name because he'd been so strongly on her mind and she'd seen him in her tree. She could say a million things, but there was nothing that she wanted to say except that which could not be said.

Her lips trembled. Her tears fell. Suddenly, he was before her, no more room left between them. He raised a gloved finger and carefully lifted one of her tears from her shaking cheek. "Do not cry." He looked at her with true concern, and her heart hurt all the more.

"Why now?" she asked, suddenly curious as to tried to make sense out of what was happening. "Why now after all this time?" Why <I>had</I> he come for her? The owl on the tree had been him, . . . but what of the owl she'd rescued? What of the owl she'd found in the street early one morning, thrashing miserably around and barely alive after being hit by some careless driver? Surely he hadn't pretended . . . ?

"No," he said, reminding her of the vast power he wielded as he read her thoughts. "That was not me, Sarah." His smile grew. "However, I am proud of you for caring for that owl so gently. I wish it had been my feathers you had touched."

"So . . . It was . . . It was just a coincidence?"

He smiled and gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. "Is there truly such a thing as coincidence?"

Was there? she wondered. She'd read the story. She'd known the chance she was taking when she had related it to Toby. She had no longer been playing with him when she'd called the Goblins, and she doubted it had been a coincidence that that story had found her or that it had been written in the first place.

But then, did it really matter rather or not it was coincidence? Her dreams were finally coming true! Jareth had returned to her after all this time! She smiled through her tears. He touched her cheek again, allowing his hand to linger this time. She trembled from head to foot, just as she always had each time he'd touched her before.

"You called for me," he said again. He drew his gloved thumb softly across her cheek. "After all this time, Sarah," he said, his own eyes glittering, "you finally called for me."

She gazed into his glittering eyes and realized that he was barely holding his own tears at bay. "Yes." She nodded, took a breath, and leaned her head into his hand. Both their smiles grew. He drew his thumb across her flesh again.

"Why didn't you do it before?" His voice was so small as he questioned her now. It would have been hard to imagine such a tiny, confused, and perhaps even scared voice coming out of such a strong, powerful, and incredible being if she had not seen it herself. She would never have thought Jareth could be scared or nervous about anything, and yet now she was seeing those very emotions with a hint of hope to which he seemed unwilling to allow himself all playing on his handsome face and in his bicolored eyes.

She looked at him thoughtfully. She searched his eyes. She wondered a million things in that moment but realized just as quickly that only two of them really mattered. "Would you have come if I had called you before?"

"Yes!" he cried with such sudden strong emotion that Sarah could almost stop wondering how he felt. "You called for every one else," he reminded her. "They came until I forbade them from coming. But you never called for me."

"You stopped them?"

"Yes." His eyes suddenly shifted away from hers.

"Why?"

He did not answer her and kept his eyes turned away. His hand stilled on her cheek, but he did not want to break contact with her.

"Why did you forbid them, Jareth? I looked forward to their visits."

"I know, and perhaps I should apologize. I can not, however," he declared with a shake of his royal, blonde head. At last, he looked at her again; her heart once more skipped a beat. Then she was floored by his revelation and even more so by the truthful emotions that poured from him with every word. "I could not stand that they got to see you, to be with you, Sarah, when I could not."

"You could have!" she declared. "All you had to do was do what you just did!"

"Would I have been welcomed?"

"Yes!" He looked at her doubtfully, and she realized that she would not have welcomed him at first. She had wanted him from the very first second she had laid eyes upon him. She'd never known a man more wonderful than he, after all. She rather thought she'd fallen in love with him in that first moment, too, but still, she'd been angry with him. She'd been too furious and too young to understand her own emotions at the time, but sometime long ago, she'd simply forgotten her anger and only remembered how much she loved and missed him.

"Why did you not call me before?"

"I didn't think you'd come."

"Hoggle told you we would all come."

"And I told him that I needed all of you!"

"But you did not mean me at that time."

She hung her head. What could she say? He was right. She'd been young, foolish, and furious. She'd thought she'd lost his love because of that, but yet, he was here now.

"Sarah?"

Slowly, she raised her doelike eyes back up to face him. "I know you want me," he asked tentatively, "but could you learn to love me?"

She burst out into a huge grin. "I already do!" she exclaimed, crying again and shaking her head.

He grasped her head in both of his gloved hands to keep her from moving, and then he made both their dreams come true as he touched his lips, at long last, to hers. She melted on the spot. Somewhere, thunder raged, but it sounded, to her, like the pounding beat of her heart. The power of his lips made her float. She didn't realize when the wind blew her window and curtains shut. She didn't feel the earth change underneath her feet although it did rock. She didn't know when they returned to the labyrinth. She knew only that he loved her and was kissing her and she never wanted him to stop.

Jareth read her mind as they kissed and knew she loved him at last. He wished, still, that she had called for him before, but he'd had to wait until she was ready to accept her own feelings and his world. He kissed her long and deep with no intentions of ever stopping not simply because she wished it but because of his own desire as well. He had his Queen now at long last, and he was never going to let her go again.

  
**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> All characters within belong to their rightful owners, not the author, and are used without permission.


End file.
